Art Outlook

Some of the news and comment we’ve spotted online this week

Europe marks 200 years since the Battle of Waterloo

Events and services have been staged across Europe to commemorate the battle. On Wednesday, the Prince of Wales unveiled a (rather overdue) memorial to the British dead at the battlefield in Belgium.

Outsider artist Nek Chand dies at the age of 90

The self-taught artist spent decades creating the Rock Garden of Chandigarh – a sculpture garden in northern India. He passed away on 12 June, a day before Pallant House Gallery in Chichester opened an exhibition devoted to his work.

All eyes on Art Basel

The 46th edition of Art Basel is underway, featuring nearly 300 of the world’s finest modern and contemporary galleries, and an expanded programme of film, lectures, performances and events. Ben Eastham has selected his highlights.

Huge fire damages French basilica

The 19th-century Basilique Saint-Donatien in Nantes suffered extensive damage after fire engulfed the roof on Monday morning shortly after mass. Everyone was safely evacuated.

Artist jailed for ‘artistic’ bank robberies

Ex MIT professor Joseph Gibbons has been jailed for a year after robbing two New-York banks for ‘art’. He apparently staged the heists, in which he stole a total of over $4,000, as research for a new film.

‘Vagina’ sculpture vandalised at Versailles

Anish Kapoor’s controversial sculpture Dirty Corner was ‘lightly sprayed’ with yellow paint this week, after its controversial unveiling in the palace gardens. The large, funnel-like sculpture resembles a vagina – and as Paul McCarthy found out last year, a certain faction of the French conservative right don’t take kindly to such suggestive public sculpture…

The most British quarrel ever at Kenwood House

Meanwhile in London, the Hampstead Heath Decorative and Fine Arts Society has been banned from Kenwood House after a heated confrontation over cold coffee and insufficient parking.